Saturday, June 28, 2008

Scottish Man Sues Council Over Inadequate Lessons

"Speaking outside court yesterday Mr Tierney said: "No-one is willing to be held accountable for failing to educate my daughter."

It couldn't happen in England of course, given that we don't have an equivalent of the Scottish Standards in Schools Act, which contains the following:

"Duty of education authority in providing school education

(1)Where school education is provided to a child or young person by, or by virtue of arrangements made, or entered into, by, an education authority it shall be the duty of the authority to secure that the education is directed to the development of the personality, talents and mental and physical abilities of the child or young person to their fullest potential."

Why should parents in England be celebrating? Well it confirms once and for all that legislators should be very careful not to infringe the duty of parents to be responsible for the education of their children. It's not clear if the action will succeed however, because presumably parental responsibility for education still stands in Scotland.

Update: Have subsequently heard that where a Scottish parent delegates the responsibility for educational provision to a public (state) school, section 1 of the SinSS Act applies and the parent is reasonably entitled to expect the test to be met. Looks like this dad might be in with a good chance then!

The relevant section is s30 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980. The primary legislation is, and always has been, different in Scotland, and there is no such concept as 'education otherwise' as the relevant legislative clause notb includes private schooling as well as EHE. It is always a mistake to try and simply put a kilt on English legislation and assume similarity when Scots law has evolved completely separately.

"Where school education is provided to a child or young person by, or by virtue of arrangements made, or entered into, by, an education authority it shall be the duty of the authority to secure that the education is directed to the development of the personality, talents and mental and physical abilities of the child or young person to their fullest potential."

If this applied in England and Wales, it is possible that most parents who have schooled their children could sue their LEAs, and the whole system would collapse. Nice fantasy!